From Texas, I mostly cover the energy industry and the tycoons who control it. I joined Forbes in 1999 and moved from New York to Houston in 2004. The subjects of my Forbes cover stories have included T. Boone Pickens, Harold Hamm, Aubrey McClendon, Michael Dell, Ross Perot, Exxon, Chevron, Saudi Aramco and more. Follow me on twitter @chrishelman.

Dallas billionaire Harold Simmons died on Saturday after an illness, aged 82. The legendary empire builder and corporate raider was worth $10 billion at Forbes last reckoning, ranking 40 on the 2013 Forbes 400. He died at the Baylor University Medical Center at Dallas, having been in failing health for several months.

Simmons, who built his fortune from nothing, was known to wear $3,000 sport coats to reflect his wealth, but underwear from Wal-Mart out of respect for his frugal upbringing.

He’ll be remembered mostly for three things. First, for his investments in old-line “dirty” industrial conglomerates and a Texas nuclear waste dump.

Second, his deep philanthropy — he gave a reported $500 million to charity, including $175 million to UT Southwestern to establish the The Harold C. Simmons Comprehensive Cancer Center and $50 million to Dallas’ Parkland Hospital. He was known for regularly passing out hundred dollar bills to panhandlers.

Third, his massive funding of Republican politicians, including $4 million towards the “Swift Boat” attacks on Sen. John Kerry and $30 million to Super PACs in the 2012 election cycle.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, he called Barack Obama “the most dangerous man in America” because he wanted to “eliminate free enterprise in this country.”

He’ll be missed by pals like Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, as well as T. Boone Pickens, who in a statement today said:

“Harold Simmons was one of my best friends, and it’s never easy to say goodbye to close friends. Harold accomplished so much in his life. He was a passionate person — passionate about his family, his business, philanthropy and politics. We worked together on a lot of different projects. He was one of the most successful and focused men I’ve ever known. We should all leave such a rich legacy behind. My thoughts and prayers go out to Annette and all of Harold’s many family members and friends.”

Born 1931 in Golden, Texas to schoolteacher parents, Simmons spent his early years without indoor plumbing or electricity. But went to the University of Texas and became a bank examiner.

He began his empire building in 1960. With $5,000 worth of savings and a $95,000 loan, he bought a pharmacy. By 1973 he had built up a chain of 100 stores, which he sold to Eckerd for more than $50 million.

He put that cash to work buying shares in cheap public companies like Amalgamated Sugar, relying heavily on debt to maximize his bets. He liked to target companies with overfunded pension plans — which Simmons saw as pools of underutilized capital that could be put to better use if invested in shares of other takeover targets.

In time he built up, under his Contran holding company, a collection of cash cow industrial companies. These included NL Industries (formerly National Lead), Titanium Metals (which he sold a year ago, pocketing $1 billion), Kronos Worldwide and Keystone Consolidated Industries (which he recently took private).

He was sued left and right for contamination resulting from the operations of his National Lead company — numerous NL sites made it to the EPA’s Superfund list.

Showing an omnipresent eagerness to invest in the dirtiest of industries, in recent years one of his primary foci had been Waste Control Specialists, which successfully beat back opposition from environmentalists to open a low-level radioactive waste dump in Andrews, Texas, near the New Mexico border. So far thousands of tons of waste have been buried there.

Ironic, for a guy who made money on companies that created so many Superfund sites, Waste Control Specialists has profited from helping to clean them up — burying hundreds of thousands of tons of PCB-laden sludge from G.E.’s operations along the Hudson River.

A classic libertarian, Simmons didn’t think there should be any restrictions on political donations. And he didn’t care much about the far right-wing’s Pro-Life or anti-gay tendencies. In 2011 his foundation gave $600,000 to Planned Parenthood and another $600,000 to a group called the Resource Center, which helps the gay and HIV-positive community.

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There is no credible evidence of any socialism in the administration. The entire Republican party is built on a foundation of Koch brother billions, inherited from granddad who helped build the Soviet Union with Stalin and the Bolsheviks. Any billionaire who advocates against Democracy is a rich idiot.

What do you call banks that privatize profits but want tax payer bailouts when they incur losses?

I call them parasites that want to turn the country into the former USSR.

Socialism for the rich is OK but not for the little guy.

Armand Hammer helped build up the USSR. He did business with the Communists from 1921 all the way through the Cold War. Was he also a smart billionaire or a greedy capitalist? He claimed to be a staunch Republican.

The man who donated hundreds of millions to Bush, who killed tens of thousands of honorable soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians , calls Obama the most dangerous man. We lost another conservative hypocrite.

and gained a Liberal hypocrite. I feel like the only people who like Obama are the one who expect an entitlement check in the mail every month, and like to pay twice as much for lower quality health care (like canada, look it up, wealthy canadians go to US for quality health care) and like to pay higher taxes, (caz you don’t care since you don’t make any money anyways)

The only reason why I say this is because I grew up under Socialism in Soviet Union, and this is EXACTLY where America is headed with brainless, liberal, can’t think for themselves, Big government, parasites aka democrats.

When Canadians go to the hospital to be treated the first question they are asked is, what is ailing you. When Americans show up at the hospital the first question they are asked is “how do you plan to pay.”

Incidentally, since the US health care system is supposedly the best in the world how do you explain why infant mortality and life expectancy in the US is the lowest in the industrialized world?

Yo mrethiopian , fact – The Real President Bush was A TRUE CHRISTIAN for The American People and represented only The American People , whereas , The GREAT PHONY President Barack ( THE PUPPET ) Obama is a Muslim who represents the anti-American murderous cults Al-Qeada , Hezbolla , Taliban , and all other RAT WRENCHED Islamic Cults . So to be quite direct , it is you and your cess-pool minded type that equal to your spineless Barack Obama .

Bush didn’t crash the economy the collapse of the housing market did. Construction is the heartbeat of our country. The collapse of the housing market was caused by banks giving loans to poor people that couldn’t afford them. Why did the do this? Janet Reno and Bill Clinton forced them to. In economics what goes up or down artificially will correct itself. Both of these points are facts all you have to do is look at the information and be smart enough to understand it.

Are you kidding? Bush and the Republicans cut the regulatory investigations, basically put fraud on steroids. The banks and financial institutions committed fraud and are paying record fines for lying to mortgage applicants. Not one bank was forced to hand out one loan to any ineligible applicant. They were only forbidden to redline by zip code. Even Fannie and Freddie were victims of banks falsifying ratings by banks. Sorry, your information is inaccurate.

A “true christian” who lied us into a bogus war that killed tens of thousands of honorable soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians who did nothing to us, imprisoned people without trial, tortured and spied against constitutional values? Don’t think so.

What country do you live, you idiot. Can’t be what’s left of America, after Obama. Yeah, Bush was a criminal. Obama is a bigger criminal. Name a president who wasn’t a criminal. Bush was a smart criminal, Obama is a moron, leading half of the citizens of this nation who are liberal morons and dragging the rest of us down the toilet. When it all comes crashing down, don’t come to us for help. Liberal communists are going to pay a huge price for their stupidity.

Well, your environment warped your understanding, You are projecting your experience onto something that does not exist. And there is no credible evidence of any entitlement checks. Only slightly more than 1% get welfare in this country and of those 19% are able bodied and must haste a job to get welfare and have a lifetime limit of five years. You need to get rid of your Soviet ghosts.

all I know is health care is more expensive now under Obama than was ever before, and I made a middle class wage and pay more taxes than ever before. Government is getting bigger and folks have absolutely ZERO motivation to work harder and make more money because it will all get eaten up by taxes.

I’m upset with democrats because they push for more taxes and bigger government and where I came from that system FAILED, people suffered, and still suffer, unemployment is extremely hight (just like it is in most of the blue states)

are you happy about paying more taxes, so obama could spend almost $900m, thats $900,000,000 on healthcare.gov that barely works and is rotten to its core with flaws?

So please understand my frustration, but as a first generation immigrant, i saw USA for its free market and the government giving air to breath to small business to grow and have a decent living, not trying to lay off employees and have everybody part time so that I don’t have to pay for health insurance or go out of business and get warfare checks. The 1% are in DC make insane policies that will turn this country into Detroit

Well all you know is wrong. Obama has cut spending lowered the deficit from 1.5 trillion to a projected 600 billion(CBO) and added 7.8 million private sector jobs( Marx is spinning enraged in his grave!). . Where you came from has nothing to do with this country and in spite of Republicans attempts to turn this into a corporate oligarchy, we have a constitution, your former country did not, so get over it. According to the CBO and the OMB, the Republicans are the historic spenders raising more debt and deficits than Democrats. Democrats outproduce economically and in job creation three times more than Republicans. Republicans have created two depressions in modern history, not Democrats. Because of Conservative corporate fascism, yes it really is, we now lavish more than twice what we give our neediest citizens, to the richest corporations called rebates but just a fancy word for welfare. There is no such thing as a free markets. The business sector is totally dependent on the collective government infrastructure for security and economic balance. What sank the Soviet Union was a extreme and corrupt communism that failed economically. Communism only works in small groups like a kibbutz. Even Fidel Castro is on the record that communism doesn’t work. There is no wide scale communist movement nor socialist movement in this country. Too bad you weren’t born in 1920′s Italy. The “T” party, the corporate Republicans and yes a very few corporate Democrats, would send fascist chills down your spine.

James, if what you say is true, then why is welfare spending the largest item in the federal budget?? http://www.budget.senate.gov/republican/public/index.cfm/budget-background?ID=3c687e99-a5c5-46f2-9f9d-0ea5a62c3183

Because it isn’t. Setting aside the fact that the Republicans have lied about jobs, the largest spending is to the Pentagon. 56% of all tax dollars goes to the Pentagon and it has never been audited for waste fraud or abuse. The conservative tax policies have provided profitable corporations more than twice the tax payer paid rebates (welfare) we give the needy.

Because the Republicans insist that Social Security and Medicare are welfare programs which they are not. Workers have paid for those benefits through payroll deductions. You are probably unaware because you never worked a day in your life.